Quixotic Edition

It's not me. It's you.

So, I'm finally owning up to the fact that I don't really like what Steve/Tony fandom's become. I still love the characters and the whole pairing and chatting about them and spinning the wheels about maybe and what if. I love scans and spoilers and I'm dying to see IM3, and when I'm with select people (not naming names, but you probably know who you are) I'm able to dig up that same old enthusiasm.

Because what I love is what Steve/Tony used to be. I wallowed in the long, plotty fic where the romance was often parallel (or secondary! gasp!) to the action plot, I reveled in trivia and character dissections, in long threads about fic ideas and plot lines. And while the fic might have been thin on the ground, there was a pretty good chance that whatever came through would be good quality.

Now... IDK. I'm getting tired of feeling like 95% of the time when I run across a Steve/Tony post, it's not talking about the same characters, even when we're referencing the same universes. The characterizations are barely recognizable, at best. WTF is with SuperFamily and how do I burn it with fire? And Deadpool/Spider-Man? Does anyone even know who Deadpool is anymore? And Natasha does have a personality, you know! It's occasionally cute but for FFS, it's OOC, at least admit that. It's all weird and disconcerting and leaves me feeling like I tried to climb some stairs and my feet slipped out from under me.

I don't even read the fic anymore because the hit:miss ratio has gotten incredibly heavy on the miss. Sturgeon's Law has taken effect. And since most of my fandom engagement is in reading... IDK what's really left for me. Writing is great, but it's mostly solitary work. I can't fangirl on writing alone. Some can; I'm not one of them. So yeah, I'm just BOFQing it up over here and finally admitting something that's been bugging me for a while. No one wants to be that fan, and I bit my lip a thousand times to keep from proving the "comics/old fans are meeeeeeean" whiners true. But here it is: I'm not happy with fandom, and it doesn't seem to be going away. :\

*hugs you* I have felt the same way about the DC fandom for ages now! Things were on the way down before the reboot but now they are just... really bad. There is so little that is good, and the people who are writing are clinging to old canon like crazy.

I write Slade/Dick, it's a personal favorite pairing, but it doesn't even EXIST in new52. It's really sad what comics fandom has become! I feel your pain 100%.

I don't know if you're interested in gen as well as slash, but if you are, I've read some absolutely wonderful stories recently. Just off the top of my head:

Freezer Burn by domarzione. Long, plotty, Steve Rogers & co. versus Hydra. This is a fusion of movieverse and 616.

Imprint by hetrez. Steve Rogers puts together a training program for SHIELD agents. Warm fuzzies.

Let's Stop The Time Warp (Again) by lettered. This is part of a series, but it can probably be read on its own. It's a Groundhog Day story, told from Bruce Banner's viewpoint. Since it's the Groundhog Day trope, and we all know how that ends, you'd expect the ending to be kind of bland and predictable. However, this one has an amazing ending.

Yeah, I got that a couple of years ago (lower threshhold for bullshit maybe?) I'm pretty happy with the parts of fandom I have friended (you, elspethdixon, the dreamwidth C_IM comm, not that I look at it much) but that's about it.

I will admit to, generally, looking for non-Steve/Tony stories in the wake of the Avengers movie, largely because of characterization inconsistencies (and many authors not writing the build-up necessary to believably get past hatesex, tbh). (And I have a fondness for including Spidey in movie-verse, but haven't read much yet.) So perhaps I've missed out on a lot of this?

I /have/ noticed a trend for short fics exploring feels, and not much else, which is not my cup of tea. Long plotty fics are where it's at, especially considering how fast I read.

Have you considered following a few reccers you agree with to avoid wading through the mire?

I want to grab comics fandom, ALL of comics fandom, and SHAKE IT. I don't know what happened to us. D: We're used to being fucked over by canon, but lately it's just been so bad... And I really think the rise of the movie fandom has hurt Marvel fandom something bad. They're just too different.

(hugs back) Good luck surviving the reboot. D: On the bright side, at least Everything Will Change should be coming around again in a few months?

Pretty much everyone I trust to rec me fic seems to be bobbing around in the same boat of "It Changed and Now It Sucks" that I'm in. I know I'm kind of a picky reader and am fully willing to own that, but argh. I feel like people aren't even writing characters I recognize anymore. :( "Characterization inconsistencies" is a very kind way of putting it.

I think 90% of the reason I'm still clinging is because I have fics and fic series to finish. It just annoys me more than it makes me happy these days. Too many memories of ~the good ol' days, I guess.

I'm still in the fandom, but it's true that finding good fic to read is getting to be more and more work. I've begun to skip any movieverse fic tagged "peter parker" in case it turns out to be surprise!Superfamily.

I gotta respect the A/B/O writers -- at least they always tag accurately.

I'm a ridiculously picky reader usually, so it just sort of makes it impossible. Thank goodness for tagging, in a way. I've no taste for ABO (I just don't get it lol), but tagging for it is yay! Of course, then there's the 500 word tag essays that spawn from that....

I feel your pain. Most of the problem for me is that I'm really not a movie-verse fan despite having enjoyed seeing them in the theater - I'm not interested in the characters or the fic for any verse except 616 (and Marvel Adventures, because it's the closest to 616), so I feel like there isn't really a place for me anymore in a fandom i used to feel at home in. Plus, now i get to see people complaining about how much Steve/Tony sucks every time I turn around, and even though i know that a disproportionately high amount of movie-verse stuff does in fact suck, it's still not fun to see your OTP bashed all the time. And cap_ironman is basically a movie-verse only comm now, which makes me sad when i think about how much fun it used to be.

And since Fraction's horrible legacy is still infecting the iron man title (I had such ecstatic hopes when i heard he was finally, finally leaving, but then the new writer turned out to be his buddy and a big fan of his work, because apparently comics fans just aren't allowed to have nice things anymore) the canon doesn't have anything for me at the moment, either.

I think I could like movieverse fic, but it's damned hard to do well. The movie really didn't give us much to work with, and AUs can only take you so far without a base to build from.

Fraction has essentially killed Tony for me. I'm just going to pretend none of that is happening and wait for it all to be retconned away in time. It'd be nice if we had decent IM comics for once, though. :(

Oftentimes I'm pretty sad I missed out on most of the pre-movie Steve/Tony fandom. I was mostly an Xmen girl at the time, with a few Vertigo titles to spice things up. Keeping track of the Xmen was exhaustive (and expensive) enough :p But though I came to the Avengers (and Steve/Tony) late, I find the 616 back issues to be the home of the characters/characterizations I love the most. And it is really hard to find anything relating to those characters in the current fandom without just diving into cap-ironman's archives.

... of course, the current state of 616 really isn't helping. Some of it is 'the MCU is coming from inside the house' stuff going on with things like the introduction of 616!Coulson and Nick Fury Jr. A ton of it is the fact that I find Iron Man's solo title completely unreadable. In my more vindictive moments, I'm really sorry I didn't get involved in Avengers sooner so I'd have the satisfaction of taking it off my pull list and removing my support for it, instead of just hanging around with my ear to the ground hoping that one day it'll be a comic I'd want to buy.

In the meantime, Marvel continues to be terrible at reprinting things in TPB. Still no on the second Tony drinking arc/first time off the wagon storyline-- but they reprinted the abusive boyfriend sentient armor story twice. Good to know you have your priorities in order. (I've been really slowly working on a Steve/Tony slanted TBP guide. It started as a checklist for myself. idk that I'll ever finish, but it keeps me reading old TBPs).

I promised myself I would never be that comic 'fan' who sticks around even though they hate everything but Marvel is doing their damnest to turn me into that fan.

So I'll just continue to wallflower. Luckily for me I have my rp partner to keep me engaged with the Steve and Tony that I adore.